Nicholas Nickleby

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens is a rather complicated novel. To even try to put a dent on the narrative is a task for someone very ambitious indeed. The film treatment directed and written by Douglas McGrath tries to condense it. In many ways he has succeded.

The story of how Nicholas avenge his dead father and in the process finds love and happiness is told with great assurance from the director and his notable players, some of the most brilliant figures in the English stage and films.

Christopher Plummer as the evil uncle, Ralph Nickleby, is excellent. This is an actor's actor. He plays this villain with relish and a panache not easily found in many other actors. Jim Broadbent appears as the lunatic Wackford Squeers in another star turn. Another performance that is subtle, yet very effective is by Tom Courtenay, as Newman Noggs, who at the end helps Nicholas get to the truth. Juliet Stevenson plays Mrs. Squeers with the right amount of bitchiness and evil. How about Nathan Lane?. He is outstanding again, as is Barry Humphreys, playing his wife.

The only problem are the younger roles. Charlie Hunnan is a likeable performer, but out of his league in this company. The role of Smike, a key figure in the novel, is handled with the clumsiness the role requires by Jamie Bell. Anne Hathaway as Madeline Bray, and Ramola Garai as Kate, are adequate.

All in all this makes a pleasant occasion, if somehow tamed, at the movies.

If Dickens were with us today, he would delight in the stock shenanigans of Michael Milken and the outrageous dysfunction of the Osbourne family. Speculation and family chaos rule his `Nicholas Nickleby,' directed on film by Douglas McGrath (`Emma') and starring Christopher Plummer as cold Uncle Ralph and Jim Broadbent as cruel Wackford Squeers.

The idyllic thatched cottage in Devonshire with its white smoke pluming to heaven contrasts sharply with the dark satanic mills of London spewing black smoke into every home and hovel. The eponymous hero, played by Brit TV star Charlie Hunnam, travels both worlds to defend the honor of his sister, overcome the tyranny of his uncle (Plummer), and find love. Along the way Broadbent's boarding-school proprietor, reflecting the workhouse slavery of 19th century England, helps his uncle sabotage Nickleby's spirit and endanger his best friend. But Nicholas also meets the delightful Cheeryble brothers, one of whom is Mike Leigh regular Timothy Spall in an uncharacteristically cheery role.

England is lovingly represented in this film by a cinematography wedded to landscape like a Constable painting, gentlemen appearing as stately as in a Reynolds, and women appearing to be sitting for Gainesboro. All seems well represented without being overdone or obvious.

Like a good Dickens novel, the filmed `Nicholas Nickleby' can't help but drive home lessons about honesty and family. Reliance on both will bring happiness. My only question is how did the Golden Globes ever nominate this as a comedy?

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (2002) ***1/2 Charlie Hunnam, Christopher Plummer, Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent, Anne Hathaway, Tom Courtenay, Alan Cumming, Edward Fox, Romola Garai, Stella Gonet, Barry Humphries, Nathan Lane, Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson. Wonderfully entertaining realization of Charles Dickens' literary classic about the good natured 19th Century titular young man (nicely played by the dashingly handsome Hunnam of late of the beloved tv series `Undeclared') whose adventures of the heart and destiny begin when his father suddenly dies leaving him in the care of his family resorting to their only living relation in London, the wealthy yet contemptable Uncle Ralph (Plummer in game form; disdainfully dour) whose life ambition outside of accumulating wealth apparently is to make his nephew's existence a living hell. Hunnam is in splendid company of the cream of the crop of British acting with a few Americans sprinkled in the mix (the fetching Hathaway as his destined love and amiable ham Lane as the leader of a traveling acting troupe) of this remarkable adaptation by filmmaker Douglas McGrath.

Having read the novel NN a couple of times I know how rich and full of funny characters and episodes this novel is. This adaptation greatly reduces the number of events compared to the novel; though I understand a director has to make a choice what elements of a story he should put to the screen I think the director has been a bit too drastic in doing so. No reference at all to the Mantalini's, or to the downfall of the Squeerses and the closure of Dotheboys hall -I sorely missed those episodes! But what I missed story-wise was partly made up by the acting of Christopher Plummer as Ralph Nickleby and the heartrending performance of Jamie "Billie Elliot' Bell as Smike. A pity that the director also puts the accent mostly on the melodramatic aspects of a story which is full of delicious humor. This adaptation has it charms but check out the royal Shakespeare's Company's version for a faithful adaptation that does Dickens real justice!

With his complex plots and casts of (often literally) hundreds of characters, Charles Dickens might not seem the most cinema-friendly of novelists, but as of January 2007 no fewer than 235 works are credited on the IMDb as being based on his works, all the way back to "The Death of Nancy Sykes" in 1897. In recent years, however, most of these have been multi-part series made for television, a medium which often seems better equipped to deal with Dickens's complexities than does the cinema. The most popular of his works in the cinema has been "A Christmas Carol", which is a novella rather than a novel, followed by "Oliver Twist" and "Great Expectations", both of which are among his shorter novels, and which are often simplified for the screen. Roman Polanski's recent "Oliver Twist", for example, omitted many of Dickens's details and sub-plots in order to concentrate on the essence of the story.

"Nicholas Nickleby", by contrast, is one of Dickens's lengthier novels, so it was perhaps a brave move to adapt it for the screen. The title character is the son of an impoverished country gentleman. When his father dies heavily in debt, young Nicholas sets out for London with his mother and sister Kate, hoping that his wealthy uncle Ralph will be able to help them. Ralph, however, proves to be arrogant, cold-hearted and avaricious. He takes Kate into his home, motivated not by kindness but by the hope that he might be able to marry her off to his business associate, Sir Mulberry Hawke. He sends Nicholas to Yorkshire to work as an assistant teacher in a run-down boys' boarding school, run by a sadistic headmaster named Wackford Squeers. Nicholas is appalled not only by Squeers's ignorance but also by his neglect of and cruelty towards the boys in his care; he is eventually forced to leave the school after intervening to prevent Squeers beating a crippled boy named Smike, who will play an important role in future plot developments. After a brief interval as an actor, Nicholas returns to London to be reunited with his family.

Dickens's villains are generally more memorable than his heroes (and even more so than his heroines, who are often rather colourless), and that is reflected in this film. Even an actress as lovely as Anne Hathaway tends to fade into the background as the saintly Madeline, Nicholas's love-interest. Romola Garai is rather livelier as the spirited Kate, and Charlie Hunnam makes her brother an honourable and brave, if headstrong, hero. The performances that stand out, however, are from Jim Broadbent as the vicious Squeers, Juliet Stephenson as his equally unpleasant wife, Edward Fox as the dissipated lecher Sir Mulberry (who turns his attentions to Madeline when he realises that Kate is not for him) and Christopher Plummer as Ralph, outwardly calm and rational but inwardly cold and stony-hearted, a man who cares for nobody except himself and for nothing except his bank balance. It is noteworthy that Ralph's luxurious house is filled with stuffed animals and birds, presumably intended to symbolise his cruelty and sadism. The one piece of casting I didn't like was that of "Dame Edna Everage" (a creation of the Australian comedian Barry Humphries) as Mrs Crummles; the idea of a fictitious female character being played by another fictitious character, who is herself being played by a male actor, is a bizarre, almost surreal, one. The only place for a pantomime dame is in a pantomime.

There have been complaints on this board that some reviewers' favourite characters or episodes from the novel have been omitted from the film, but such simplification is inevitable if a nine hundred page novel is to be adapted into a feature film with a running time of just over two hours. What matters is that the feel of the film is authentically Dickensian, and this is achieved here, not only through the recreation, in best "heritage cinema" style, of the England of the 1840s, but also through the steadily growing sense that good will triumph over evil, that the heroes will be vindicated and that the villains will receive their just deserts. This is a very good Dickens adaptation, on a par with Polanski's film and much better than Alfonso Cuaron's eccentric "Great Expectations". 8/10